14. Two Teenage Girls Vanished: A Sister’s 46-Year Search For Answers

It’s been 46 years since 16-year-old Elaine Johnson vanished alongside her friend Kerry-Ann Joel. But Elaine’s little sister, Helen Cooper, refuses to let her become a forgotten statistic. Her relentless search for answers has taken her to local brothels, into confrontations with bikies and chasing down a mysterious 42-page letter claiming to contain a deathbed confession. In this episode, Helen sits down with Tim and Xanthe after giving evidence at the final 2026 hearing of the NSW Parliamentary Inquiry into unsolved murders and long-term missing persons. She told the committee of decades of baffling police failures - from initially treating the girls as runaways to allegedly failing to link their disappearances for 20 years. Despite repeated requests for a reward denied, Helen refuses to give up, and has been pursuing answers and leads through the podcast: ‘Out From The Cold: Searching For Elaine’. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.